Millions of pounds of tainted beef allowed to be cooked, sold, some food inspectors say.

November 11, 2007|By Stephen J. Hedges Special to The Morning Call - Tribune

One federal inspector calls it the "E. coli loophole." Another says, "Nobody would buy it if they knew."

The officials are referring to the little-discussed fact that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has deemed it acceptable for meat companies to cook and sell meat on which E. coli, a bacteria that can sicken and even kill humans, is found during processing.

The "E. coli loophole" affects millions of pounds of beef each year that test positive for the presence of E. coli O157:H7, a particularly virulent strain of the bacteria.

The agency allows companies to put this E. coli-positive meat in a special category -- "cook only." Cooking the meat, the USDA and producers say, destroys the bacteria and makes it safe to eat as precooked hamburgers, meat loaf, crumbled taco meat and other products.

But some USDA inspectors say the "cook only" practice means that higher-than-appropriate levels of E. coli are tolerated in packing plants, raising the chance that clean meat will become contaminated. They say the "cook only" practice is part of the reason for this year's sudden rise in incidents of E. coli contamination.

"All the product that is E. coli-positive, they put a "cooking only' tag on it," said one inspector, who like other federal inspectors interviewed, asked to remain anonymous for fear they would lose their jobs. "[Companies] will test, and everything that's positive, they slap that label on."

There is no evidence that "cook only" meat has directly sickened consumers. But some inspectors contend that the practice conceals significantly higher levels of E. coli bacteria in packing plants than the companies admit to. That's because companies that find E. coli are allowed to shift that meat immediately into "cook only" lines, without reporting it to the USDA.

USDA regularly conducts tests for E. coli in slaughtering plants, but only on meat that packing companies have already deemed free of E. coli, the agency inspectors say. USDA officials say they do not track how much meat is put into "cook only" categories, but interviews with a half-dozen inspectors suggested it is a significant amount.

"The government keeps putting out that we've reduced E. coli by 50 percent and all of that," said an inspector. "And we haven't done nothing. We've just covered it up."

USDA denied this. In answers to written questions from the Tribune, department officials said USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service "collects its own random samples without waiting for test results from the plant."

Meat industry representatives and the USDA also said there is no risk from beef that is fully cooked, since cooking meat above 160 degrees Fahrenheit kills pathogens such as E. coli. Meat companies also said they have taken significant steps to eliminate E. coli in meat during the slaughtering process, including lactic acid washes of carcasses and steam treatments in which carcasses are heated to kill the bacteria.

Meat found with E. coli, they said, isn't worth as much.

"If raw ground beef has to go into a "cook only' category, it loses value," said Randall Huffman, senior vice president for scientific affairs at the American Meat Institute, an industry group. "There's not as big a market for that."

Most of the major meat packing companies offer their own cooked meat products, such as meat loaf, pre-cooked hamburgers and taco meat crumbles. They also sell "cook only" meat to food processing companies.

Some cooked beef products end up in programs like the National School Lunch Program, which is administered by the USDA.

The agency bought 2.8 million pounds of cooked beef in 2006, according to USDA records. Officials, however, were not sure whether the total included beef that had been found positive for E. coli.

USDA said in a written statement that "procurement of ground beef and certain other products for distribution through the National School Lunch Program is governed by additional quality requirements, like mandatory microbiological testing."

School lunch surprise

School lunch programs have increased the use of cooked beef in recent years, especially hamburger patties and taco meat, as a way to prevent E. coli poisoning from undercooked beef, according to Jeannie Sneed, a food service consultant formerly at Iowa State University.

But Sneed said she and most school lunch program managers did not know that the cooked beef they use in school lunches could have come from cattle contaminated with E. coli.

"I did not know that's a common practice," she said. "Most people are probably not aware that it occurs. But it probably does not create a great amount of concern because if meat is cooked at a little less than 155 degrees, the E. coli is killed."

Regarding the safety of cooked beef, the USDA said it "does collect and sample some cooked, ready-to-eat products for E. coli O157:H7."